Joe Farrell is running for Claremont Unified School District board, stressing his prior experience on two school boards in Connecticut. The campaign literature has few details of that experience for a comparison of the two school systems. The websites of the Connecticut schools do provide information to allow those comparisons.

Marlborough, Conn., is a town of 6,351 residents, 25 miles from Hartford, with a median household income of $101,917. Its school board oversees one public school offering preschool through sixth grade, with an enrollment of 663 students. The ethnic profile is 91 percent white, 4 percent Asian, 3 percent Hispanic and 2 percent black. Claremont has 34,926 residents, median household income of $83,997, 12 public elementary schools with 6,950 students and ethnic profile of 49 percent white, 26 percent Hispanic, 15 percent Asian and 8 percent black.

The Connecticut middle and high schools are regional with 1,663 students and a student-teacher ratio of about 12:1. Ethnic profile is 97 percent white and 1 percent each for Asian, Hispanic and black students. The per-pupil expenditure at these schools is $13,915. Claremont has one middle and two high schools with enrollment of 3,562 pupils, student-teacher ratio of about 22:1, and per-pupil expenditures of $8,782.

The Connecticut schools have 105 students (4.6 percent of enrollment) eligible for the Federal Reduced Rate Lunch Program. Claremont has 2,219 students (31.2 percent of enrollment) eligible for this program.

The data from these websites show that the two Connecticut school boards serve a much, much smaller, richer, and significantly less culturally diverse community.

Mr. Farrell’s experience is not transferrable or relevant as it is hard to conceive of a situation he may have faced in Connecticut that would have much value to the issues faced by CUSD. The website data portrays an education community in Connecticut quite different from Claremont. Voters might want to consider this.